Baked Apple Cider Doughnuts

posted by Lori Lange

When I was growing up, Sunday mornings were all about donuts. I remember hopping in the car to accompany my Dad to Winchell’s, where we’d choose a variety of donuts to bring home to the family. Personally, I liked the maple bars, old-fashioned and anything with pink icing or sprinkles. As a girl who is more often than not watching her calories, I don’t visit too many donut shops these days. Instead I do things at home, like bake these Apple Cider Doughnuts.
The pans are lined with nonstick spray and a sprinkle of sugar. I invested in some donut pans, but something tells me they’d bake up just as well in a mini-muffin pan.
I made a few big donuts and lots of little ones. Be careful not to fill the batter to the tops of your donut pans or you’ll lose the hole-in-the-middle when they puff up while baking 😉 Uh, yeah… that happened to some of mine.
They’re pretty good on their own without any adornments.
But they’re even better dunked into icing. This icing is a simple mix of powdered sugar, light cream cheese, cinnamon and milk.
Place them on a rack to let the icing set.
They’re ready to eat when you are. The texture of these is a bit different than regular, full-fat, evil donuts… kind of an airy cake texture. I thought they were best eaten the day they were made, but my little one was just as happy eating leftover donuts for the next couple of days.

The good news is… these donuts are only 131 calories for a mini donut with icing, and if you’re on the Weight Watcher’s plan, they’ll only cost you 2.5 points. If you’re not on any kind of diet plan at all, then you can just feel good about eating a healthier version of The Donut. And guess what? Tomorrow is Sunday, which means it can be your donut day too 🙂

I love donuts; they’re sort of a guilty pleasure but the guilt too often overrides the pleasure and I resist them. Truth is; I’ve been hearing about donut pans but you hit on something…as long as they’re being baked and come out more cake like, maybe I’ll resist the pan too and just do a muffin; and hit the road to the nearest shop. Oh why??? All I want now is a donut!

Wow! I just found your blog this past weekend. You have some super recipes! Your selection of pumpkin ideas was crazy! Thank you so much. I hope you don’t mind I linked you on my blog for Candy Corn Bark. I will be back soon to try out more.

I’ve hinted around that this pan would be a fun gift, so here’s hoping Santa puts it under the tree for me. I’ll bookmark the recipe, just in case!

postedSep 28, 2011 4:30 PM

ricky aaron

Thank you !!! I was just (home) Indiania and had some but I would LOVE to make these for the non-believers that think I am nuts when I talk about them I live in Florida now and I am amazed that people have never heard of them it must be a ind & mich thing ??

postedJan 26, 2015 4:10 PM

Marcie

Bought a pan to make these and went right out and bought ANOTHER pan so I can bake a dozen at a time!!!